Gecko inspires wall climbing robot for future space missions

The European Space Agency and partners have demonstrated climbing robots that mimic the stickiness of gecko lizard feet, a development that could see hull-crawling automatons attending to future spacecraft.

Researchers from ESA and Simon Fraser University in Canada subjected gecko-inspired ‘dry adhesive’ materials to space vacuum and temperatures, finding the stickiness is retained throughout.

Engineers from the University’s School of Engineering Science have demonstrated such adhesives with a family of ‘Abigaille’ crawling robots.

‘This approach is an example of ‘biomimicry’, taking engineering solutions from the natural world,’ said Michael Henrey of Simon Fraser University.

A gecko’s feet are sticky due to hairs with ends measuring100–200 nanometres across. This is sufficiently tiny that atomic interactions between the ends of the hairs and the surface come into play.

‘We’ve borrowed techniques from the microelectronics industry to make our own footpad terminators,’ he said in a statement. ‘Technical limitations mean these are around 100 times larger than a gecko’s hairs, but they are sufficient to support our robot’s weight.’

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Wall-crawling robot family

Interested in assessing the adhesive’s suitability for space, Henrey tested it in ESA’s Electrical Materials and Process Labs, based in the Agency’s ESTEC technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, with additional support from ESA’s Automation and Robotics Lab.

‘Scotch, duct or pressure-sensitive tape would collect dust, reducing their stickiness over time. They would also give off fumes in vacuum conditions, which is a big no-no because it might affect delicate spacecraft systems.

‘A depth-sensing indentation instrument was used inside a vacuum chamber to precisely assess the dry adhesive’s sticking performance,’ said ESA’s Laurent Pambaguian. ‘Experimental success means deployment in space might one day be possible.’

‘It’s very expensive to upgrade hardware once it is up in space so the idea would be to fly a more general robot in the first place,’ Henrey said. ‘This could then be adapted through software upgrades for different tasks that weren’t anticipated at the start of the project.

‘Our Abigaille climbing robot is therefore quite dexterous, with six legs each having four degrees of freedom, so it should be handle environments that a wheeled robot could not.

‘For example, it can transition from the vertical to horizontal, which might be useful for going around a satellite or overcoming obstacles on the way.’

Robotic wall-crawling is limited to relatively smooth man-made surfaces for now, with research continuing to improve performance.